The following is an excerpt, taken with permission, from "The Marriage Movement: A Statement of Principles."Is renewing a marriage culture a reasonable goal? We think so. When Americans organized in the 1990s to combat teen pregnancy, teen pregnancy declined. The recent decline in teen sexual activity, a significant decline in divorce rates since 1979, a drop in the illegitimacy rate, and the leveling off of the proportion of births out of wedlock in the late 1990s are all indicators that social change is not a one-way street. The apparent success of new strategies (such as community marriage policies and marriage education) in preventing divorce gives us powerful additional reasons to hope. We know that not all of our fellow citizens agree. There are at least three concerns that stand in the way of a renewed public commitment to marriage.The Argument From DespairThe first stumbling block to rebuilding a marriage culture is "the argument from despair." High rates of divorce and unwed childbearing, some distinguished voices tell us, are irreversible trends. As one scholar said in 1988: "[T]he changes in the structure of the family are probably the result of some sizable and largely unstoppable changes in social and economic patterns." Said another respected scholar more recently: "[L]iving together is not going away. We have to realize this is the world we live in."

We respectfully, but firmly, disagree. The history of American progress is the history of confronting entrenched social problems once considered inevitable. Slavery, racism, poverty, pollution, drunk driving, domestic violence, sexism, tobacco use--in each case, Americans proved that when a social practice, big or small, is wrong or destructive, the correct response is not fatalistic acceptance, but action. Few social problems are ever perfectly resolved. Certainly, we recognize that there will always be children born without committed fathers; there will always be abusive marriages that should not survive. But the decline of marriage is not inevitable. Social recovery is possible, as the recent encouraging turnaround in the divorce rate affirms. The goal of our movement is not perfection, but progress; not to eliminate divorce or unwed childbearing, but to reduce it further; not to make every marriage last, but to help more marriages succeed.The Fear of Hurting Single ParentsThe second argument against a marriage movement stems not from despair but fear: Will a great public effort to strengthen marriage require denigrating single mothers and their children? We don't think so. Supporting marriage does not require punishing single parents or their children. The Marriage Movement is a movement for a better marriage culture, not a movement of the smug marrieds for the smug marrieds. Many of us in the Marriage Movement are single parents or the children of single parents. We know firsthand how children suffer and parents struggle when marriages fail. We know, too, how false the common stereotype is that single parents don't care about marriage. Few parents, single or married, dream of the day their daughters will become single mothers, or their sons turn into absent fathers.Children of single parents, like all American children, need and deserve help in making better marriages than their parents may have had. They need a marriage culture that affirms their deepest aspirations and does not merely confirm their deepest fears; a culture that tells them that married love is a possible, reasonable, normal, achievable goal. Fatherless boys, in particular, need help in affirming the value of responsible, nurturing fatherhood. They do not need false reassurances that their own fathers' abandonment was no big deal, or that if they in turn become part-time or absent fathers, their own children will not suffer. If boys without fathers are to grow up to be loving, committed fathers to their own children, they cannot live in a culture that tells them that full-time fathers are not important.